Page Turners: ‘Our Song’ author Anna Carey

Anna Carey is an Irish Book Award-winning novelist, journalist, editor and scriptwriter who spent her teens and twenties playing in bands. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels for young adults. Her debut novel The Real Rebecca won the Senior Children’s Book of the Year prize at the 2011 Irish Book Awards and her last book The Boldness of Betty was shortlisted for the same award in 2020.

Her drama podcast The Famine Monologues was released by RTÉ in 2021 and her play The Making of Mollie was staged in 2024. Our Song is her first book for adults. She is married to her former bandmate Patrick Freyne and lives in Dublin.

Did you always want to be a writer? Tell us about your journey to becoming a published author.

I started writing stories almost as soon as I could read and wrote a lot throughout my childhood and teens but I didn’t finish a novel until I successfully pitched the idea for my first book, The Real Rebecca, to the O’Brien Press back in 2009. It was published in 2011 and won an Irish Book Award and I just kept going from there.

What inspired you to start writing?

When I was a kid, whenever I read a book and loved it, I’d want to read more stories with the same vibe. And when I ran out of those stories, I’d start to write one myself.

Tell us about your new book, Our Song. Where did the idea come from?

It’s a second-chance love story about Tadhg and Laura, who were bandmates in college and who reunite sixteen years later, when he’s a music superstar and she’s an unemployed copywriter, to finish a song they started writing back in the day. I got together with my husband when we were in a band together in our mid-twenties, so I know all about hooking up with bandmates!

What do you hope this book instils in the reader?

I hope it makes readers happy and reminds them that there are lots of ways to live happily ever after.

What did you learn when writing this book?

I learned how much I really love writing romantic comedies. I just felt totally at home in this genre.

Tell us about your writing process?

I try to write 1000 words a day, but I also do a lot of editing and rewriting on top of that. And I take lots of walks to work out plot points and any problems I might be having with the book.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

I drew from some aspects of my own personal history for this book – the fact that I was in bands throughout my teens and twenties, that I’m married to my former bandmate, that I don’t have children. But in general I find inspiration by going for walks, listening to music and letting my mind wander.